I saw a post a few days ago which of course I’ll never find again. It was a politics-related tweet that was basically saying that as more women under 40 go into politics, it is inevitable that people will weaponize nude photos/sexts/things they did online when they were 20 against them (not to say this hasn’t already happened, just that it will happen more and more). And we collectively need to get a lot firmer and better at saying “This is irrelevant, a huge number of women have done this, and it shouldn’t matter to her reputation or career” or else the general effect will be to deter women who have ever done anything sexual on the internet (sending a racy photo to a partner, or writing spicy fanfic) from entering politics at all.
And it’s not just about politics. More and more published authors, for instance, have also written fanfic, but a combination of factors (including AO3’s existence) means it’s easier to track those things down now and weaponize them. If we want to have aspiring politicians and authors not just say “ugh well I guess I’ll never publish anything/never hold public office because I don’t want to deal with the harassment”, we need to get louder and clearer about saying that having done or written about sexual things is normal and common and doesn’t impact a person’s worth or reputation or skill in a totally different field.
Think really hard about the general climate that’s being created when women, LGBT+ people, and POC, are made to feel ashamed and afraid if they decide to speak up that someone is going to dredge up something they said online, or a photo they took, and use it to try and discredit them. Who exactly benefits from that? Does the world feel safer if a person who wrote a darkfic a decade or two ago doesn’t get their next novel published? Or if a woman who sent nude pics to her boyfriend is forced to resign from office because he leaked them to the public? Do you think that this type of extremely broad net is only going to catch the “bad” people and leave the “good” ones unscathed? Are publishers going to start saying “hm the last time we published a book by someone who was a fanfic author, it turned into a giant publicity disaster, but we’ll definitely take a chance on the next one who comes along!” Which voices are at risk of being drowned out by this environment of fear?
Because if the only answer that comes out of this is “women, LGBT+ people, and POC will inevitably get trashed for anything even remotely sexual they do in public (and some things they did in private),” the world is a poorer place for it.
The original tweet, just as an added thing.
(The point of the original post is excellent and important.)
